Penny's Monologue
by Luminous Lu
Summary: Penny writes about her life and Desmond.


**Penny's Monologue.**

I'm afraid I might have lost myself along with him.

It's not like that, not physically lost, no. Or yes, and I have lost a part of my physical self as well, but the loss I'm talking about is deeper, more contained, less obvious. Like a part of my soul is gone, lost forever in the space between me and him, all the oceans that separate us.

I've always said I couldn't live without him. Breathe without him, move without him. I always thought I couldn't bring myself to eat in his absence, to open my eyes and face a world in which he does not exist, in which he does not fall from stairs and immerses himself in red paint, like he did on our last week together. His clumsiness. Always tripping on things, always falling from stairs and stools. He could never be quiet for log, and that showed. I remember when I started dating him, he always showed up with bruises on his legs and arms. I used to ask him if it was his other girlfriend who hit him. He laughed at me, placed his hand on the back of my head and pulled me into a kiss. It was his way to say that I was the only one.

I've lost who I am. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. My father is dead and all I can do is spend his money on a search that is probably endless. I left Henry on the altar, along with the 500 other guests and ran out of the church. I couldn't do it. I couldn't imagine myself married to a man other than Desmond. He was my destiny, my fate, my kindred spirit. Like Ulysses to his Penelope.

So here I lay, on this bed, with a pair of knitting needles on my hands. I'm knitting a cloak I'll never finish, a cloak I undo when nobody's watching, because finishing up this cloak will mean he's gone. And I can't take that thought; I can't take the reality of his death. The reality I need is the one we lived in London, is the reality in which I wait for him in bed and he comes home to me, takes his clothes off and gets under the sheets with me. I want the realness of his muscles against my stomach; I want the materiality of his arms around my waist. I refuse to succumb to any other reality; I refuse to believe in any god that sells me a version of history in which my Des is gone.

He has this scarf, orange and greenish. He left it behind when he left, on his London apartment. He must have thought he wouldn't need it on the boat. Yes, he was probably right, and I'm glad he left it behind because it smells like him. The centre of his scarf still holds the manly scent of my man, the mix of aftershave and the natural aroma of his skin. And I feel suddenly ashamed to admit that when it gets too hard, when his absence comes in the form of physical pain, I hold it close to my face and inhale Des's fragrance; that's the moment when the world seems like a better place.

My hand goes to my stomach, slowly, and I suddenly recall the pain and the fear that came with his disappearance. I couldn't tell him when I saw him in Los Angeles; I just couldn't form the words. I saw him so broken. So painfully broken, that I couldn't possibly put him out of his misery by letting him know that his unborn child had died. He hadn't been there with me when it happened, only two weeks after I left his apartment. I hadn't been the one to hold my hand in the doctor; he hadn't been the one to hold my hand while I threw up in a hospital bed. He hadn't known that his child had died. And I couldn't possibly be cruel enough to tell him after all those years. He'd feel guilty, he'd feel betrayed. Oh, his honour, that made him such a good man.

Good men are pretty hard to come by, and he's one of them. That's why I don't give up, that's why I don't let the thought of him being gone for good sink in my soul, take its place amongst my thoughts. Take a place on my heart. Because even if he was the worst man on earth, he would still be _my_ man. My Desmond. My love and my life, my death and my unborn child. He would still be a part of me, and that's why I think I'm losing myself in the process of losing him.

Suddenly the time has passed, I'm eighty years old and sitting on a rocking chair in some porch, a colourful cloak wrapped around my knees while I wait for a ghost to come by. The colours have meanings, pink for the pure love, yellow for joy, green for hope. Blue for melancholy and red for those nights and fierce passion we shared and that I've missed so much. A myriad of colours and tones, feelings and the fear of not seeing him cross the door to my apartment ever again. Leaps of fate, leaps of faith, of the faith I've never lost, I'll never loose.

So I write this and I cry. I have no other way of coping, no other way of letting myself go. My tears are my best friends, my way of showing I'm alive. So I keep writing and keep crying and keep looking for a man I know one day I'll find, even if I have to be dead for that. And I'll search this world and the other, because Penelope waited for her Ulysses but I can't just stop and wait, I have to do something.

The phone rings next to me. It's 3:05 and the phone is ringing, and suddenly my chest is heavy with the certainty of his voice on the other side of the line. But it's Mathias, not him. It's okay, though. Because I know it will be him, next time. And I'll wait. Patiently, lovingly. Even if that means I've lost myself, I've lost who I am. I don't care anymore. All I care about is finding him, and bringing him back to the comfort of the bed I am in right now. Bring my Ulysses back to the comfort of his Penny's arms.

I love him. And I always will. And that's all he needs to get by.


End file.
